Bruiser is a loser
In spite of spending a lifetime in the business, I can never resist asking clients whether or not they enjoyed the holiday I booked for them.
I guess it’s like a hairdresser checking she got the fringe straight.
Living in a small community, I come into contact with my clients all the time in the post office, the doctor’s surgery, the pub and the supermarket.
And it was in the queue at Waitrose that I bumped into a client recently returned from Cyprus.
She didn’t look tanned, but I remembered that she’d been holidaying with a new boyfriend and assumed that they might have spent a lot of time in their room rather than sunbathing. I was musing on this when she caught my eye.
“Did you enjoy your holiday?” I asked, much to the annoyance of the check-out girl who was urgently requesting her to enter her PIN number into the terminal as the queue was building.
“No, not really,” came the unexpected answer, and a whole bunch of queueing ears pricked up.
“It was nothing to do with you, or the arrangements or even the resort,” she said, “although the slight delay to our flight out did make me see that patience is not a virtue my boyfriend possessed.”
The past tense did not escape my notice.
“It went downhill from there. We rowed about everything. He didn’t want to do anything, while I wanted to do some diving and that sort of thing. Considering I’d paid for the holiday with him promising to pay me back, I thought he could have made more of an effort.”
People in the queue murmured in agreement.
“Eventually,” she continued, “we had an almighty bust-up and he punched me in the mouth.”
The queue was wide-eyed with horror and the informal jury passed its verdict on the thuggish boyfriend as the check-out girl stared open-mouthed. My client pushed her trolley away and said goodbye.
“I’ll be in to see you soon,” she said, “I’m thinking about Cape Verde. But I’ll be travelling alone. I need a holiday!”
It’s just too dear, dear
Later on that evening, I sat next to a neighbour at a quiz night in our village hall. Between questions, we managed to chat about a long weekend he and his wife had recently enjoyed.
In August, he and his family had been enjoying a fortnight in Portugal when he was called back to the office early, leaving his wife to deal with their three children for the rest of the holiday.
By way of compensating her, he’d booked a romantic break in Venice.
“Did you enjoy it?” I asked.
“It was lovely, but expensive,” he replied. “With the euro so strong it cost a fortune. I paid £12 for a cup of coffee in St Mark’s Square. And back at home, I could pay less than that for dinner for two with wine from Marks and Spencer.”
“Ah, yes,” I said, “but you’d be missing out on the romance. The sunsets, the music, the gondolas, the pasta…” I went on, waxing lyrical.
“Don’t start me off,” he said. “The gondola ride was €80 and she was more interested in gnocchi than nookie afterwards!”
“Perhaps you ought to try again,” I said. “Christmas in Vienna has a certain magic”
“The way things are going, she’d be lucky to have Boxing Day in Butlins!”
All things considered…
I listened to a discussion on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 recently, where callers debated whether some flights should be child free. This is always a hot potato and there were plenty of chippy callers.
Most people agreed that, while it is irritating to be stuck in a confined space at 30,000 feet with Other People’s Children screaming, there are plenty of other antisocial types of travellers who similarly raise the blood pressure.
I have to agree. Nobody wants to sit next to the toddler that will not be comforted, but neither do they want to sit next to the bloke who has drunk too much or the heavy smoker whose clothes alone, if inhaled, could prove lethal.
When it comes to children, as with everybody else, the flying public need to be tolerant of behaviour that cannot be helped and vociferous about that which is just plain inconsiderate.
Maureen Hill works at Travel Angels, Gillingham, Dorset
